Page 38 of Below the Shadow of the City

I am so glad you got back to me. We’re excited to have you join this project, you’ll make a great addition among our other featured creators.

Attached is our contract, by agreeing to this you’re agreeing to submit eight recipes to us on or before December 1st. I think I’d mentioned this previously, but you are welcome to include recipes you’ve previously made on your account.

I will say though, the team would love to see some new ideas from our participants.

I look forward to working with you!

Billie

Isit and stare at the email. I’ve opened the PDF attachment, read it, and then closed it multiple times since it popped into my inbox. The contract would bind me to this project. I should be excited, right? I shouldn’t be hesitating like I am? My toes tap nervously while I mutter “fuck it” under my breath and skim through the contract. The legal jargon goes over my head. I pick up on enough information to understand what I’m getting myself into. Just when I send the signed contract back, my phone buzzes on my desk.

“Mom?” I answer it with more surprise than I intend to. Her calling me is unexpected, her calling me midday on a Thursday even more so. There’s a breath, as though she’s about to plunge underwater. I’ve never been on the receiving end of this kind of call, but instantly I know what it has to be. I haven’t heard my mom’s voice in weeks, not since she’d called to ask how to log into Netflix. I’d planned on mentioning the cookbook opportunity to her, it’s just that my mind has been elsewhere.

“Siggy,” she utters the nickname only she and my dad have ever used, “it’s your dad he—” A sob chokes out before she can finish. I go straight to worst case scenarios, I imagine attending my own father’s funeral and the eulogy I’d write. I picture a world where he’s not the one dancing with me at my wedding. The silence on her end of the line expands like a balloon about to pop.

“He what, mom?” I ask, desperate and panicked and about to vomit onto my desk.

“He had a heart attack,” I hear her gasp for air with a shaky inhale. “He’s okay, they’re about to take him in for surgery.”

“He’s alright?” My voice sounds so childish when I ask.

“Barely,” her breathing has grown less rapid, “he’s not out of the woods, but they’re optimistic.” Suddenly the hypotheticals rewind and place themselves neatly away into a box for another time.

“What hospital?”

“Huntington—” She starts

“Okay,” I cut her off and begin searching for train times, my shaking free hand hardly able to type. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Honey you don’t have to⁠—”

“Yes. I do, mom, I’m not letting you wait at the hospital alone. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.” She chokes out an ‘I love you’ and a goodbye and I’m thrust back into the present where I’m at my desk barely halfway through the work day.

My fingers are trembling too much to text, so I go into an empty conference room and call Maddox without thinking first. I could run to Margo’s desk, I know she’d help me without a single question.

For some reason, my knee jerk reaction instead tells me to instead call someone I’m currently in a few week-long situationship with. In the days since our “official” second date any avoidance I’d tried to show was entirely ignored by him. His charm is a difficult thing to ignore, and we’d text throughout our days and have phone calls at night. Always initiated by him, but never resisted by me. Something is building between us that is getting more and more difficult to tear down.

Which is precisely why I’m not going to ghost him right now, despite every cell and nerve in my body sending me panic signals telling me to disappear into the abyss and hope he’ll forget about me in four days. I can’t let myself do it.

When he answers the phone a high-pitched, shaky voice comes out of me when I greet him. It’s small, vulnerable, and foreign sounding.

“Sigrid?” His voice sounds more hushed and deeper than when he’s called before. For a moment I’m not sure why I called him, other than to hear his voice.

“I don’t want to completely bail and disappear on you, so I’m telling you I’ll be at the hospital and my parents’ place.”

“The hospital?” He asks rhetorically. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes—well, no. My dad had a heart attack. He’s okay. I think he’s okay. I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know, so I’m just going to go and be there for my mom.”

“I’ll take you.”

“Maddox, no, I’m not making you drive out to Long Island. It’s too much of a risk for you, and it’s fine, I can finagle the train ride.” Until now I forgot that he even had the ability to drive in the first place, I didn’t call to guilt him into blowing his cover. Besides, I’d taken the train countless times, it’s not a terrible ride, and the Uber from the train station to the hospital wouldn’t be that much of a blow to my wallet.

“You’re not going to do that,” he nearly growls at me. It’s the first hint of any negative emotion I’ve seen from him, I’m taken aback by it, my skin forms goosebumps under my sweater.

“It’s seriously fine,” I refuse to be an inconvenience to anyone, especially him. He can’t give me more than I can reciprocate, and what he’s offering to do far surpasses the expectations I should have for someone I barely know. Already I’m regretting bringing this situation up to him.

“Meet me outside your building in…two hours. I’ll be in the black SUV with the very, very tinted windows.” I reluctantly agree, thinking it best to not argue with a creature that could rip me in half.